No Alpha Males AllowedBiologist Karen Strier has been studying these peace-loving Brazilian primates and their egalitarian lifestyle for decadesBy Steve Kemper Smithsonian magazine, September 2013

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For a long time, New World monkeys were the second-class citizens of primatology. “New World primates were considered not so smart, not so interesting, and not so relevant to human evolution,” says Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. “They were sidelined—totally inappropriately, as Karen has demonstrated.”

Strier’s research introduced the world to an alternative primate lifestyle. Female muriquis mate with a lot of males and males don’t often fight. Though bonobos, known for their casual sex, are often called the “hippie” primates, the muriquis in Strier’s study site are equally deserving of that reputation. They are peace-loving and tolerant. Strier also showed that the muriquis turn out to be incredibly cooperative, a characteristic that may be just as important in primate societies as vicious rivalry.

Strier’s ideas shook up primatology, making her an influential figure in the field. Her widely used textbook, Primate Behavioral Ecology, is in its fourth edition and “has no peers,” according to the American Society of Primatologists. In 2005, at age 45, Strier was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a rare honor. The University of Wisconsin recently recognized her with an endowed professorship. The money is being used to support her research in Brazil, where the muriquis she knows so well continue to surprise her.

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Affectionate gestures, including full-body face-to-face embraces, are common. It’s not unusual to see five or more muriquis in a tangled furry cuddle. Strier says that some males become more popular as they age, and younger males seek the company of the elders and solicit hugs during times of tension. Squabbles are rare. “Maybe their drive for social cohesion and conformity is much stronger than their aggression,” says Strier.

They also tend to be easygoing about the other big activity that agitates almost all other primates: sex. Unlike chimpanzees and baboons, male muriquis don’t attack rivals to keep them from females, Strier says. There are no alphas in these societies, so muriqui twosomes don’t have to sneak off to evade punishment by jealous suitors. What’s more, female muriquis don’t need to form coalitions to protect infants from murderous males. Strier has called muriqui mating a “passive affair.” Males don’t chase down females or bully them into sexual submission. Instead, a male waits for an invitation from a female, who selects her partners and copulates openly. Instead of battling each other for access to females, males bond into extensive brotherhoods, and Strier suspects they have replaced fighting with “sperm competition.” In proportion to their slight frames, muriquis have oversized testicles. It may be that the male producing the most sperm has the most tickets in the reproductive raffle.

When Strier first observed these behaviors, she thought muriquis were anomalies in the primate world. But as research documented the behaviors of a broader range of primates, Strier realized there was actually a lot of variation—more than was generally acknowledged. In 1994 she wrote a paper titled “Myth of the Typical Primate” that urged her colleagues to reconsider the emphasis on aggression as a mediator of primate relationships, which “prevailed despite repeated efforts to demonstrate the limitations of such arguments.” She contended that the roots of primate social behavior, including that of people, might be more accurately reflected in the flexibility, tolerance, cooperation and affection that predominate among most primates, and that these qualities are at least as recognizably human as aggressiveness, competition and selfishness. Strier’s paper was pivotal in initiating a new way of thinking about primate behavior.

“We have this idea that competition is good,” says Robert Sussman, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution, “that everybody is out for themselves, and that the people at the top are by nature superior. But there’s now lots of evidence that competition among primates only occurs when the environment changes because of outside influence. The ultimate goal of evolution is to reach an ecological equilibrium and avoid competition and aggression, a very different point of view. Karen Strier has become one of the leaders in this alternative paradigm about the evolution of cooperation.”

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In another unexpected break with predictable behavior, five female muriquis emigrated to another forest on the far side of 200 yards of bare pasture. Two of these adventurers made the dangerous trip back into the reserve, where it’s suspected that one of them mated before again crossing the open ground to the new forest.

Eking out a living on the ground might sound like a radical departure with no real consequences, but it makes the muriquis more vulnerable to predators. Camera traps have captured images of ocelots and a family of cougars in the reserve, and feral dogs and other carnivores are known to roam the pastures.

“Basically they’re telling us they need more space,” Strier says. To give it to them, Preserve Muriqui, the Abdala family foundation that runs the reserve, is working with local ranchers and landowners to connect the forest to the archipelago of small forest fragments on the reserve’s periphery.

Strier wonders about the potential for other changes. What will peaceful, egalitarian primates do if crowding becomes more severe and resources run short? “I predict a cascade of effects and demographic changes,” she says. Will the monkeys become more aggressive and start to compete for food and other essentials the way chimps and baboons do? Will the clubby camaraderie between males fall apart? Will the social fabric tear, or will the muriquis find new ways to preserve it? Strier has learned that there is no fixed behavior; instead, it’s driven by circumstances and environmental conditions. Context matters.

“Nature is designing my experiment: the effects of population growth on wild primates,” she says. Among the many unknowns there’s one certainty: The muriquis will try to adapt. “It’s not surprising that long-lived, intelligent, socially complex primates are capable of great behavioral plasticity,” says Strier. "It gives me hope. After watching this group for 30 years," she adds, "anything is possible."

Given that Cards Against Humanity has a card labeled "Surprise Sex", this seems a weeeeeeeeee bit hypocritical._________________"No, but evil is still being --Is having reason-- Being reasonable! Mousie understands? Is always being reason. Is punishing world for not being... Like in head. Is always reason. World should be different, is reason."
-Ed, from Digger